Since 1984, the Arad Art Museum functions on the second floor of the building located in Gheorghe Popa Teiuş street, no. 2 - 4, where the permanent exhibition can be accessed, in parallel, with temporary art exhibitions.
The permanent exhibition, reorganized in 2013, is representative for the profile of the art collection and highlights the pieces that are benchmarks for the level of civilization, with implicit reference to aesthetic values ​​of the local environment, primarily Arad. Through a diachronic structured presentation, the most significant works that have marked the evolution of the art collection are put on display. The chronological limits of it are placed within the XVIIIth and XXth centuries.
The opening of the Art Gallery in Arad, linked to the inauguration of the Cultural Palace (October 1913), is marked by the classics of Hungarian painting: Aggházy Gyula, Benczur Gyula, Liezenmeyer Sándor, Barabás Miklos, Munkácsy Mihály, Lotz Károly. They are joined by artists who recorded biography touches with Arad: along Munkácsy, they are Válentiny János, Szamossy Elek.
The working manner cultivated within the influential artistic centers of the nineteenth century, namely the Academies in Paris, Munich, Düsseldorf, Dresden, Vienna, Budapest, marked a part of the educated local bourgeoisie commanding portraits or interested in decorating their interiors with genre scenes and landscapes. For this segment, the art collection holds works by Johann Christian Brand, Marastoni Jakab, Oswald Achenbach, Johann A. Gebhardt, Hermann Kern, Adolf Lüben, Wagner Sándor, Hugo Mühlig, Olga Wisinger.
The reconstitution of a Biedermeier style interior - common in middle class homes from Arad in the nineteenth century - marks the transition towards a large segment of the exhibition, where local artists are shown as well as collection stages in the history of the interwar period until today.
A selection of works of art, which entered the Romanian Cultural Palace collection due to the involving of the inter-war director Lazăr Nichi, holds paintings by Gheorghe Petrașcu, Catul Bogdan, Aurel Ciupe, Samuel Mützner, Sabin Popp, Kimon Loghi, a sculpture by Frederic Storck.
The Painting School in Baia Mare influenced both, artists and the public’s opening towards renewal of European art trends of the first quarter of the twentieth century. Painters from Arad, working in Baia Mare, like Nagy Oszkár, Petru Feier, Nicolae Chirilovici, Iulian Toader are put on display along with their masters: Ziffer Sándor, Perlrott Csaba Vilmos, Thorma János.
Graphics, paintings and sculptures by artists from Arad or who, for a time, worked here, in the inter-war period, are represented by the works of Sima Dezső, Dioszeghy Lászlo, Iulian Toader, Marcel Olinescu, Pataky Sándor, Carol Wolff, Iritz Sándor, Cornel Minișan, Hajós Imre, Virányi Endre, Gheorghe Groza. Some of them have worked or exposed in Arad after the war too.
The chronological arrangement presents contemporary artists born in Arad (Vasile Varga, Eugen Popa, Ovidiu Maitec), Sever Frenţiu, who worked in Arad between 1955 and 1970, Ione Munteanu, Pavel Alaszu, Ioan Cott, Baranyai Francisc, Emil Vitroel, all remembered in past tense.
A white parallelepiped, the kinema ikon exhibition project Wunderkammer, joining material objects, graphic works, photographs and collages, in an installation, related with devices projecting experimental works in various formats, older or newer, including digital, ends the visiting route of the permanent exhibition. Also here, a synopsis of the editorials published in the Intermedia magazine /1994-2012/, along with a collage of texts from catalogs occasioned by kinema ikon events /1970-2012/, allow an at-a-glance viewing of the story of a the KI group, whose hallmark is an umbrella. Under its roof, three generations of creators have produced and continue to produce, playful objects and art events in visual, kinetic and acoustic format.
In the space for temporary manifestations, personal or group exhibitions, of Romanian or foreign contemporary artists, are organized, alternating with exhibitions of collections: European Painting /XVIth – XIXth centuries/, modern Romanian art.